R.I.P. Fear Bassist Derf Scratch

The Anti- label's blog reports that Derf Scratch, bassist for the legendarily misanthropic and violent L.A. hardcore band Fear, died last Wednesday. At the moment, there's no word on how Scratch died, or even how old he was.

Fear formed in 1977, and Scratch, born Frederick Milner, was their original bassist. With their relentlessly bleak and sarcastic songs and their riotous live shows, Fear was maybe the roughest band in L.A.'s notoriously rough first-wave hardcore scene. In their appearance in the great 1981 punk documentary The Decline of Western Civilization, Scratch coined the immortal phrase "eat my fuck", and the band brawled with the audience before they played a single song.

Fear also famously appeared on the Halloween 1981 episode of "Saturday Night Live", thanks to friend and fan John Belushi. While they played, punk kids from New York and D.C. (including a few future scene kingpins) moshed, stagedove, and basically threatened to tear Studio 8H apart.

As anarchic as they were, though, Fear found room for some surprisingly intricate riffage and genre-blurring experimentation in their all-out assaults. Scratch played saxophone on the great piss-take song "New York's Alright if You Like Saxophones", and according to Anti-, he was "rumored to have possessed a masters degree in music".

Scratch left the band in 1982, shortly after they released their debut LP The Record. In Fear's always-shifting lineup, one of his successors was future Red Hot Chili Pepper Flea.

Below, we've got video Fear's appearances in The Decline of Western Civilization. To see that "SNL" performance, click here.